I once heard an English lady explaining to a Frenchman how to pronounce the word Have.
"You will pronounce it," said the lady reproachfully, "as if it were spelt H-a-v.

It isn't.

There is an 'e' at the end." "But I thought," said the pupil, "that you did not sound the 'e' at the end of h-a-v-e." "No more you do," explained his teacher.

"It is what we call a mute 'e'; but it exercises a modifying influence on the preceding vowel." Before that, he used to say "have" quite intelligently.

Afterwards, when he came to the word he would stop dead, collect his thoughts, and give expression to a sound that only the context could explain.
Putting aside the sufferings of the early martyrs, few men, I suppose, have gone through more than I myself went through in trying to I attain the correct pronunciation of the German word for church--"Kirche." Long before I had done with it I had determined never to go to church in Germany, rather than be bothered with it.
"No, no," my teacher would explain--he was a painstaking gentleman; "you say it as if it were spelt K-i-r-c-h-k-e.